Diamonds and Rust
by sparrowfalling
Summary: There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of discovering them over and over and over. A series of Shep/Garrus fic-lets.
1. Butterflies

**_Butterflies_**

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><p><em><span>116/11__: Edited, added about twice as much content to the beginning, for a more introspective look at Shepard. The "dead is a long time" phrase is from a story by WarlordFil. In which: Shep begins to deal with the fact that she has a crush on a certain turian team mate. Timeline: beginning of ME2 through before they board the Collector's ship the first time._

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><p>They bring her back from the dead, body soul and spirit intact as far as she can tell, and they drop her straight back into the fire.<p>

Despite it all, the thoughts of how Cerberus had learned to raise someone from the dead, despite how god damned _tired_ she was, how this new body seemed so _vulnerable_—the last time she'd felt this fragile, like a glass vessel webbed with cracks, she'd been a child hiding in a closet with her dad's pistol clutched in her sweaty hands, back in the nightmare that had ended her innocence on Mindoir—but despite the fact that somewhere along the line, all the glory had gone out of the fight and now she trudged on, now the long weary road stretched ahead of her _ad infinitum_ in a duty that not even death could negate—despite this, she was grateful for her resurrection. For the chance to try again. To get things _right _this time.

Dead is a long time.

In the beginning, she is surrounded by psychotics and mercs and a Cerberus crew who are human enough on the outside but Shepard wonders how many of them chose to be here and how many had no choice at all. She wonders if they know who she _really_ is—not the Spectre who saved the galaxy, but the young soldier who watched her entire team get ripped apart by thresher maws.

She doesn't care about any of these people and they don't care about her. It is only the _job,_ the _duty_ that she had sworn her life to fulfill.

And she'd satisfied that oath, but it hadn't been enough. Not content to let her rest quietly in her grave, the Universe had coughed her back up into the same hellish nightmare. Geth and Reapers and corruption everywhere she went. Was she Atlas, holding the whole galaxy up on her reconstructed shoulders, or Sisyphus, forever doomed to push the boulder up the impossible hill?

Most days, she is both.

Alone at night, everything is dark around her. She lets her eyes half-close and she feels like she's drifting again, weightless and guilty and failing. She lays in her bed with the _Normandy_ whispering around her and the viewport open above her head, assaulting her with a vision of the galaxy she is supposed to save. She looks inside for the fire of purpose that had once driven her, but it drowned in the vast, inky blackness of space and she knows she's never going to get it back.

The stars have never seemed so far away.

Maybe Cerberus didn't do as good a job as they thought. Part of her is still dead after all.

There is no question that she _will_ fight. She could no more turn away from this than she could crawl back into her grave. That decision is who Shepard is. Duty. Discipline. Honor. The blood and bones of her identity.

Soldier: this is not her job, but her _definition_.

And yet.

In her former life, there had always been…well, a light at the end of the tunnel. A vague pipe-dream of happiness somewhere down the line, a blurry and indistinct idea of _peace_ and _warmth_ and _home_. Not that she could or would ever stop being a soldier—but she'd always thought…always…_expected_…

…Something more.

That chance, that _hope_, was now frozen ash on a forgotten world in the wreckage of a derelict ship. She'd died. That was all you got. Even though she wasn't really dead anymore, there was nothing now but the crushing weight of _duty_.

Not one of those stars held anything for her. Not one of the countless legion of lives out there…

She'd died. They'd mourned her, and moved on. Two years was a long time. An impossible length of distance, an eternity between _then_ and _now. _May as well have been two _hundred_ years. At least then, the regrets burning inside her would have been…cleaner. Easier to bear.

Dead is a long time. In your heart, dead is forever.

And then, Omega. The end of all things, the ancient word meant in a long lost language. Fitting, she'd thought.

Archangel.

When he'd removed the helmet her heart gave a funny little lurch in her chest. He'd seemed—distant, unsure. Although it was clear that the two years had put new scars on him, he welcomed her without hesitation. He'd changed, but so had she. She hadn't been able to restrain her _joy_ with him, grinning like a giddy child. She didn't, at first, question the depth of her feelings. He wasn't just a familiar face, this was _Garrus_, with whom she had been to hell and back—more than once.

The compass of her life, spinning out of control, now held true north once more.

Later, alone, she offered her story. That it had not, in fact, been some sort of undercover mission or subterfuge. That she really had died. He listened quietly, watching her with a predator's eyes, a new edge in his voice.

Standing there, pouring out her story—she holds nothing back, nothing censored, not worried about being judged or that he might think her stupid—it is not a _decision_ she makes, merely something that _happens_ and she realizes: she trusts him. This is what it feels like, to be around someone you fully trust. She had forgotten. Perhaps she had never known.

He looks at her with his head cocked like he can't quite figure out what's going on with her.

That's okay. She's not entirely sure either.

And then she dreams about him.

She wakes up abruptly in the middle of the night not long after they'd picked him up from Omega. She sits up and stares down at her hands, still half-dreaming enough that even though she knew they were hers she felt like they weren't. Not after what her unconscious mind had been _doing _with them. She crawls out of bed and takes a cool shower. Tries to go back to sleep and whether it is the darkness and the late hour combined with her own exhaustion or...something..._else_...she can't keep her mind from wandering back to the—_events—_of her dream.

_What...what if...?_

Even alone and in the darkened privacy of her room, her cheeks flush at the thought. She immediately has a dozen reasons _why not_ and yet...she can't keep her mind from circling back—his eyes, turning to focus on her, what would it feel like to _touch_...?

She pulls the spare pillow over her face and presses down. Her heartbeat thunders in the muffled silence. _Oh God. Oh God._

This is not her element. She doesn't know what to _do_ with this and if it weren't so god damned _important_ she wouldn't do anything at all.

But—dead is a long time. And she cannot put herself through it again, the weight of shame and failure, the bitter burning of _regret_.

She watches him on their missions, fantasizing about _what if_ when her mind should be focused on wind sheer and projectile trajectory and how fast a krogan could run uphill over uneven ground. Thinking about him _was not_ good for her. Was. Not.

But she watches him and wonders: could you kiss a turian? If you ran your fingertips over that thick plating, would he feel it? What would his skin _taste like_? If she bit him just there, at that spot under his jaw, high on his throat where the scales looked like soft leather—

And then he would turn and look at her and her cheeks would _flush_ and she was _so glad_ that her helmet hid her face.

What was he saying?

Oh. Right. The fight.

_She was such an idiot_.

Gunshots and ducking behind cover to avoid biotic discharge. Bloodshed and bullets and mission complete.

Shepard works up the nerve and asks Mordin to search her terminal for Cerberus bugs and is _so glad_ she didn't chicken out of doing so when the former STG turns up a _handful_ of odd little devices designed to record everything from her incoming and outgoing messages to how long she left the lights on in her quarters and what time she usually took a shower.

_Goddamned Cerberus. _There had to be a polite way to tell Miranda to _back. The fuck. Off._

She wants to wait a few more days to work up the guts to actually run a search but she knows that Miranda will replace the bugs with better ones, and that if she wants her secret to _stay _a secret...

She takes a deep breath.

What she's thinking about...well, it's...it's physically possible. She knows that. _Everyone_ knows that. But...was it...would it be...

..._good?_

And now here she was weeks later, double and triple checking the lock on her door before sitting down and swiveling both the screen and her chair so that she had her back to the wall. EDI had been shut out as well as Shepard could manage such a thing, which meant asking very nicely and hoping EDI's own morality would be enough for the AI to keep its word to honor her privacy.

Shepard opened the Extranet, bypassing her messages and pulling up a search engine. The cursor blinked in the search bar. She tapped her fingers on the desk and tried to think. Tried to ignore the fact that her palms were sweating and her heart was racing and she felt like a teenager sneaking her first glance of...of...

_Well, honestly..._

She sighed and gave up.

_Turian/human porn._

The cursor blinked behind the words for another long moment and then she sighed again and steeled her spine and clicked _enter_.

_1,390,000,000 results_

With one finger on the key, leaning backward in her chair, Shepard scrolled through the results. She didn't necessarily want to _watch _anyof it...was there something here that was...a how-to text? _Interspecies Sex for Dummies?_

The problem was she wasn't even any good at intimate relationships with her _own_ damned species. _Christ_.

_This is a bad idea, this is such a bad idea, I can't believe I'm actually doing this_.

Garrus would kill himself laughing if he could see her now.

The thought brought a small smile to her lips and she relaxed a bit. Yes. That's it. Don't let yourself think about all the horrible, awkwardness that could result if—things went wrong. Just...think about what you _want_. _Why_ you want it.

So.

She cared about him. A lot.

She felt almost like she had back in her first days at the Academy when she'd had a horribly pitiful crush on her firearms instructor and she had worked _so hard_ to hide her feelings. She was _good_ at setting aside her feelings to get on with the mission.

Too good.

That was the whole reason she was sitting here, scrolling through an astronomical amount of links and not clicking on a damned one.

_Coward_, she thought to herself, and clicked the next link that came up.

_FREE PORN FREE SEX VIDEO XXX FREE PICS FREE MOVIES TURIAN/HUMAN SEX INTERSPECIES SEX XXX_

A wall of thumbnails below the site's banner featured...well, exactly what was advertised. She didn't even have to click on one—simply hovering her cursor over the picture resulted in a short preview of the...action.

She didn't know how one was _supposed_ to feel when...one looked at...pornography. She'd glanced through the Extranet a couple of times in her younger days, and then she'd dated a couple of guys and found out that sex was just—sex. Nothing spectacular. Really. Nothing that she couldn't live without and, ah, take care of for herself. And who wanted the emotional headache that came with a relationship anyway? But then, she'd never been good at _feelings_ when it came to herself and it was just so much _easier_ to keep a cool, professional distance. Sure there were the occasional misunderstandings to deal with but she'd never really met someone that she..._needed_. That she cared enough about to work at the whole relationship deal.

You were only supposed to get _one_ chance at life.

Shepard didn't _want_ to go back to that lonely, duty-driven existence. The clarity of hindsight from beyond her own grave—how's that for a life lesson? Fighting—her duty as a soldier, as a Specter: this was the core of her identity. She had rushed headlong into proving her own worth to herself and although she'd succeeded beyond her wildest dreams she had never stopped to question: _what for? _

It was what Mordin said about the small picture. She couldn't really fight for the salvation of the countless lives in the galaxy. But she could, maybe, show one turian that life wasn't as unjust as he thought. That it was _possible_ to achieve this crazy thing they'd set out to achieve and they could _do_ it if—if only—

(_if he believes in me like I believe in him)_

She'd already died once. She'd already faced a lifetime of wrong decisions and wasted regrets.

She was _not_ going to go through it again. Living her life in denial of her needs and wants hadn't accomplished anything. It hadn't made her a better soldier, it hadn't made a difference in her stupid _feelings_ except that she was still lonely and still refusing to admit it. She didn't want that anymore.

She wanted Garrus.

Probably.

_Okay, face facts here Shepard—looking up interspecies porn puts you a little past the realm of 'probably'._

He was her best friend. This maybe wasn't saying a whole lot because aside from the crew and a few contacts back in the Alliance, she didn't exactly _have_ friends. Shepard wasn't a friend-making kind of person. She had charisma all right and she knew damn well how to read people and what to say to get them to do what she wanted and _like it_, damn it. This made her damned good at her job but it wasn't really conducive to establishing intimate relationships with someone.

With Garrus none of that seemed to matter somehow. Whether it was because he'd served with her before or..._whatever_...they just plain fit together. She trusted him in a way that she hadn't really trusted _anyone_ since she'd lost her family on Mindoir. And she'd never really _decided_ to let him in. It had just kind of _happened_ somehow. He was always there, he always had her back. Half the time she didn't even need to tell him what was needed, they fought so well together that it was scary sometimes. She just _knew_ he'd be where she needed him.

He never crowded her boundaries the way Alenko and Liara had back in the day, or the way Jacob did now. He never made her feel uncomfortable or awkward—well, unless he was picking on her, but then she'd almost certainty done something to deserve it and—to be fair _she_ was the one crowding _his_ boundaries these days and she'd gotten more than a few measuring looks from him—but—but that was right...wasn't it? When you were flirting with someone? You pushed a little to let them know you were...interested...

_Oh, Shepard, you've got it _bad_._

And now all she's accomplished is to work herself up into an even greater state of nervousness. Sitting here alone in her darkened quarters, with the fish tank and the garish neon colors from the porno site flickering over her. Approaching this with all the wrong feelings, trying to stay detached and utterly failing, trying to keep her cool and not even coming _close_.

But at least she was _trying_. This life wouldn't be a waste.

And as difficult as this was, Garrus was _worth_ it.

_Shut up. Stop being such a prude. It's just—naked people, for Christ's sake. _

She tapped the key lightly with her finger. It wasn't just the nakedness and her own uncomfortable, fumbling attempts at researching this. It was the _this_ that she was researching. It was the fact that once she stepped through this door she wouldn't be able to pretend anymore that she had just missed a familiar face or that it was just a misplaced crush or _whatever_ it was she told herself when she wanted that damned inner voice to _shut up_ about what the rough skin of his palms would feel like running up the flat plane of her stomach, or when he opened his mouth and said something so incredibly out of place that while everyone else was groaning and laughing and he himself blushed bright blue she wanted so badly to lean in and kiss his cheek because he was _so. Damn. Cute_.

Shepard leaned forward until her head hit the desk.

Dealing with her emotions was not her forte. Not anywhere close. And now she found herself in this wonderfully awkward position _looking up alien porn_ so that she could proposition the one person in this galaxy she really respected. And she didn't know how to find out if he would even consider—what she was thinking about, let alone...have a...meaningful relationship with her. Or what the consequences would be if she spoke up and he _rejected _her. Or what would happen to the friendship that she had come to rely on so much if things fell apart.

Her heart hammered in her chest in a way that had nothing to do with lust.

_I'm scared. _

_Okay. So what? _She frowned at herself, clenching her fists and trying to boost her own courage.

_This is no different than fighting geth or mercs. I just need to rush in and blow everything to hell._

Wait.

_Bad_ metaphor.

And now her thoughts had gone in that inevitable direction and her cheeks _burned_.

_Christ, I'm bad at this._

Every time she started seriously dealing with her feelings, her well-trained defenses stepped in and changed the subject and derailed her whole thought process.

_Easy answer then. Stop thinking about it, just do it, soldier. _

Right.

She sat up and clicked the first vid on the screen.


	2. Uncharted Waters

**_Uncharted Waters_**

_In which__: Garrus struggles to come to terms with Shepard's death, and figure out what he's supposed to do now. My take on how he goes from being the sweet and somewhat naieve ME1 Garrus to badass renegade Archangel. Timeline: shortly after Shep dies. Reviewers of chapter one: _Thank you for your kind words :)_  
><em>

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><p><em>I have no interest in sailing around the world.<em>

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><p>He is going to fail Spectre training, and it is all Shepard's fault.<p>

Garrus doesn't even know what to feel most of the time. How to react. The reflexes and instincts are all there but his spirit doesn't work right anymore.

Mentor. Commander. _Friend_.

Gone.

The way she had altered his life, the shattering changes she had wrought in his soul simply by being there, being Shepard, it meant this: some days, waking up in the ugly pre-dawn darkness, in the gray neutrality of the world, Garrus stumbled into the bathroom and flicked on the harsh yellow lights and facing his own visage in the mirror, and had to struggle to remember who he was. What it meant to be Garrus, Vakarin, turian, sniper, son and brother and former C-sec.

If he had known.

If only.

If he'd _known_ that she'd _die_, if he'd _known _that he wouldn't feel _anything_, not anger not grief not sorrow, only this bewildering _numb_ cold tightness in his chest and this feeling of—this sense of: the compass has been shattered and he was lost in the darkness. Gravity failed him so utterly that he didn't even known who or what he was, let alone where was _up_, where was the way _out_.

He had always laughed at the human concept of hell.

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><p><em>Instead of sailing off into the sunset, he hopes to sail into the next century.<em>

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><p>After her funeral, he went back to Palaven.<p>

He had no options left, no plans or ambitions of his own that mattered without—

Stop. Don't think about it.

He disembarked from the shuttle and stood in the crowded spaceport with his bag in his talons, with the babble of his native tongue harsh and strange to his ears. He looked around him and a bitter anger welled from his heart. Anger at _her_ because she'd led him to believe that he could trust her, she'd _cultivated_ that trust, worked for it, paid for his loyalty with her blood and her dedication until he'd come to _depend_ on her. They all had.

She'd let them all down. She'd died.

And he couldn't forgive her for it.

_There was no one else like her_. No one. Not a single living spirit could match her fire, her drive, her tenacity. The way she'd look up at the impossible odds stacked against them and then smile her crazy little half-smile—

He'd followed her through hell and back and now he had no idea where to go because she'd _left_ him. She'd _failed_.

He fights the snarl off of his face. The tide of people parts around him, leaving him untouched. He hates every scaled, plated face, he hates the way the heat seeps into his bones, but what really has his blood _boiling _is that she isn't there to share it.

This is what it should have been:

_She stands beside him and even though she is in her suit and all he can see are her eyes, he knows exactly what she's thinking. She and Wrex and Garrus—they have dealt their own bloody justice across so many worlds, his life has depended on being able to read her thoughts in an instant, to know just by the way she shifted her balance, from the sharp intake of breath and flicker of her eyes what she wanted done, what she _needed_ him for—now it was the easiest thing in the world to read the glinting edge of her amusement just by the angle of her brows and the narrowing of her eyes. Beneath her mask is a shark's grin, all teeth. He thinks that maybe she understands something about being a turian after all._

This is a thought that, unknowing, they all share towards her: _You are _wasted_ on the humans. You should have been born turian/krogan/asari/quarian. _Later, a drell and a salarian will echo this.

It is her gift, to take the best of each of them and reflect it back, to make them shine, to share in their hopes and dreams. She builds them up and out of the broken, fragmented pieces of each of their lives she creates something that is much more than a sum of parts. They were more than a team: she made them into her _family_.

Alone in the crowd, billions of miles from what is left of her crew, among his own people Garrus feels more alien than he ever has in his _life._ He wants more than _anything_ to turn and see her standing there, one hand on her hip with her head cocked and that glint in her eyes, that dangerous human smile on her mouth.

He stands, empty, feeling the loss of her echo though this hollow space inside him. Someone in the crowd jostles him, but he doesn't feel it. His talons bite into his palms and he doesn't really feel that either.

He doesn't belong here.

He doesn't belong anywhere, now.

He tilts his head back. The thick barrier of the ceiling is a kind of glass that keeps out radiation and sunlight, but he can still see the bright orb burning through the shadow. In his mind is her voice. An echo. All that is left of her, this memory burned into his mind. A comet, a shooting star—the bright, brief flash of warmth and heat that is gone in a breath, but leaves the afterimage of its light lingering against the darkness.

_You can't set your compass by someone else's star, Garrus_.

She would be so angry at him, for running back to Palaven. Back to his family, his _father_ like a little child who needed someone's guiding hand on his shoulder. In the crowded spaceport, with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, he recalls the exact cadence of her voice, the precise angle of her brows. Human, female—so alien and, yet, so familiar, even then in the earliest days when he knew more of the legend of her than the reality.

He learned more in those few months with her, breathing in the stink of battle and really, truly, for the first time in his _life_ he began to realize his own potential. The things he wanted to fight for—justice and fairness and protecting innocent lives—at her side, there was no such thing as impossible.

_Human sweat and krogan musk and the smoke from their guns and the peculiar ozone tang of biotic energy, shouts and gunshots and the sudden muffled oath of pain, he looks away from the scope of his rifle aware of the metallic tang of human blood in the air and, yes, she's wounded and the splash of crimson stains her armor, the ground around her splattered in red droplets, and she presses one hand over the wound but even as the blood wells around her fingers she has that crazy gleam in her eyes, the predatory smile that is all teeth and something surges inside of him—admiration for this crazy, deadly human female—gratitude, that she had allowed him to fight alongside her—his own self-confidence growing as he followed her to hell and back—_this_ was really what it was all about, the fire and the bloodshed and the bullets flying all around them, _this_ was what he had never known he had always wanted—to take life and death into his teeth and this joyous, fearless dance of battle for a cause that was _good _and _just_—this was something his father would never understand, this was something he would never find anywhere else in the universe. _

_He would never be able to tell her what this meant for him—he barely even understood it himself. _

_This is what it means to be _alive_, and for teaching him, for guiding him along this path, he owes her more than she would ever know._

And now, she never will.

Here and now his talons clench, his teeth grind together. His skull aches. Muscles are tense and trembling, eager for a fight.

Here and now, he is _alone_.

Cut loose to drift among the stars with no compass and no anchor and _this was what she meant all along, _about finding his own path and he _hates_ her for it—that her death has thrust this course upon him, and that he can't even share it with her. He can't even tell her how _pissed_ he is that, even dead, her spirit haunts his soul, her voice nags him—and he can't go through with this. He can't go back to being—a good turian. A good son.

Because it isn't what he wants. And she knew that.

He becomes aware that he is growling, and that the other turians in the spaceport are giving him a wide berth. His talons have pierced the skin of his palms and blue blood trickles from his clenched fists. Security personnel are watching him carefully.

Garrus snarls at them all—he is _aching_ for a fight. But this is not the place, and they are not the source of his anger.

**_Fuck_**_ you, Shepard._

Garrus turns, and strides back up the walkway into the ship.

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><p><em>All men should strive<br>to learn before they die  
>what they are running from, and to, and why.<em>


	3. Good Enough

**_Good Enough_**

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><p><em><span>In which<span>_: _Garrus's POV of their night before the suicide mission  
><em>

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><p><em>I don't know how the story ends<br>And I don't want to know, so if you do  
>Don't tell me<br>Let's pretend we write it as we go  
>Promises are so hard to keep<br>We say things we don't mean  
>You're here for now, is good enough for me<em>

- Trifonic, Good Enough

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><p>She came out of the shower in her pajamas, soft clothes to wear while sleeping. Turians slept naked. But he thought he could come to prefer this, the sight of her soft human body not hidden by the clothes but accentuated by them. Low-slung pants clung to her hip bones, and—humans weren't his thing, you must understand this—but the bared flesh, so odd a color and so <em>soft<em> and vulnerable—he wanted nothing more than to touch her there, run his talons over her skin and watch her face while he touched her, watch to see what expressions she might wear. How sensitive was human skin? More than a turian, and he didn't want to hurt her, but—but he wanted to drag his claws over the pale expanse of her belly and mark her flesh, he wanted her breathy gasps to fill the air, he wanted her hands clenching on his body, he wanted his name falling from her lips.

They spoke, one to another, and the words were inconsequential. What mattered was the pounding of his heart and the way she eased his lingering uncertainty. What mattered was her hand on his face and the depth of her eyes as she gazed up at him, the way her body swayed toward his.

She wanted this. He wasn't crazy.

Maybe _doing_ this was crazy—beyond the species barrier was the risk of their friendship, the fact that she was his commanding officer, she was _Shepard_, capable of reaching out and accomplishing _anything_ no matter how impossible or stupid. She was an officer in the Alliance, the first human Spectre, and he a turian renegade with a busted up face and broken armor and barely enough credits in his account to cover a bottle of wine.

There were so many reasons _why not_. So many reasons she should have chosen someone else.

What was he going to do if this didn't work? If she—rejected him, after everything?

He _needed_ her in his life. He needed to be at her side in battle, needed to turn and see that crazy smile on her face, that dangerous glint in her eyes. To be in the middle of a breakthrough in his calculations, only to have the door swoosh open behind him and her voice—that oddly lilted single-toned human voice that always threw him in those moments because, when he wasn't thinking about it, _he expected her to sound turian_.

The truth was that sometimes, he forgot they were different. That this shouldn't happen, shouldn't work, shouldn't make sense. That her hand on his arm shouldn't make his heart hammer inside his chest, that he shouldn't be so fascinated with the way she smelled, that her smile shouldn't make him forget his words mid-sentence.

The truth.

The truth was that he was more than a little in love with her. The truth was that he dreamed about her, about this moment when the lines between them blurred away in the haze of lust and it didn't matter anymore, what differences might lay between them, because in this moment being with her—it was enough.

It was everything.

Her hands on his body, the slow undressing and the sighs—these were things that he had thought would be laced with nervousness, apprehension. His talons moved over her naked skin, marking her, a cartographer's layout of once-unfamiliar territory now claimed as _mine_. His expectations had been of fleeting pleasure, of the air heavy with awkwardness and ashamed avoidance, but her eyes met his fearlessly and while her touch was soft and unsure, the hesitation came not from disgust or embarrassment but from stilted need. She wanted to please him but didn't quite know how.

He didn't really know how to please her, either, but she guided his hands on her body and showed him. Heedless of judgment or condemnation, _trusting_ him with her body. _Here, like this_, and he found that, after all was said and done, they weren't so very different after all.

He wanted to do more than scratch her skin. He wanted to bite her, to sink his teeth in to the bone and forever claim her as his. He wanted to tear her apart and put her back together in such a way that she would only ever want _him_. He wanted more than this one moment, these few hours stolen from the teeth of the storm that loomed over them.

She curled up on his chest and hid her face against his neck while they both fought to regain their breath. Sweat-slicked human skin, so soft and so strange against his body. The taste of her, strong in his mouth and their combined musk heavy in the air, in the warm darkness of her room. His talons clenched on her hip, her fingers tightening in response where she gripped his shoulder.

He wanted to tell her. The words hung heavy in the forefront of his mind. But her weight shifted against him as the alarm on her desk trilled softly, summoning them back to reality.

She lifted herself away from him—and he tightened his hold on her. For a moment, they stared at one another, and then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his forehead. Her breath rushed out over his face and he closed his eyes. Close enough to hear her heart beating. To feel the rush of blood through her body, held at bay by that impossibly thin human skin. Her fingers traced over his scar, lightly, scarcely brushing the damaged plating.

_Don't leave me again._

_I won't._

_I love you._

_I love you, too._

He wanted to hold on forever, wanted to tell her all the things that had been building inside him, wanted to let spill the stream of realizations and thoughts he'd had since she'd proposed—this. This union of flesh and spirit.

All they had was now. All anyone ever had was now.

This time, when she pulled away, he let her. His talons left an impression in her skin, a fleeting mark that would fade all to soon.

It was enough. It would have to be enough.


	4. Target Practice

_A/N: Just a small update tonight, I've got a bigger one for the next couple of days that'll require a rating upgrade. _

_Timeline: Sometime after Horizon and before Garrus's loyalty mission or any romance between them._

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><p><em>Shadow Broker file NSR2-1322: Partial audiovideo recording Normandy SR-2 camera feed CB276 shuttle bay. Garrus Vakarian and Jane Shepard. Routine target practice. Music playlist: Shepard's. Song list: Boston, More Than A Feeling; Metric, Help I'm Alive; Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Relax; Bad Company, Feel Like Making Love._

G: -a good soldier. I thought he was one of us.

S: I thought so too, Garrus.

G: …I still can't believe…doesn't he trust you? _You_? I mean, Cerberus is about as corrupt as it gets but you know that better than anyone.

S: Honestly? It didn't surprise me at all. Part of me…expected it, I guess. He started in on all that bullshit and it felt just like…confirmation. Is it fucked up that I _expect_ to get stabbed in the back by my own damned species? Is it because all humans are bastards, or do I just have a neon sign glowing over my head that says "backstabbing assholes apply here"?

G: You trust Miranda.

S: (snorts) The Cerberus cheerleader.

G: And Chakwas. And Joker.

S: Individuals. That's different.

G: Kaidan isn't an individual?

S: Not anymore he's not. Now he's just—

G: One more name on the list.

_A pause in conversation to reload weapons. Video feed tracks Shepard with her shotgun propped against one shoulder, watching the turian adjusting the scope on his rifle._

S: Garrus, what made you decide to trust me? Back on Omega, I mean.

G: _Decide_ to trust you? What do you mean?

S: There I was, working for the mercs trying to take you out, Miranda and Jacob in Cerberus uniform… I'd been _dead_ two years. And you. Welcomed me back without, without even a hesitation. Or question.

G: (laughs) Shepard, I _know_ you. We've been through hell together more than once. If it looked like you were on the wrong side, it was only because I didn't have all the details yet.

S: It was one hell of a statement of loyalty, Garrus. I don't know if I would have trusted me.

G: Why is this bothering you so much? That I trusted you when Kaidan didn't?

S: …Hell, I don't know. It's just. Well.

G: Yes?

S: I can't help but wonder if it's….at least partially because I don't trust him either.

G: Ah.

S: And I've always trusted you.

G: That's kind of my point. About why I followed you on Omega, I mean.

S: You've never not trusted me…

G: Well. For a given value of trust. Just so long as you don't ever ask me to ride copilot on a Mako with you again, I've got your back.


	5. Afterlife

_Timeline/summary__: Garrus and Shep reconnect after he almost dies on Omega. Because it always seemed weird to me that he was on his feet so quickly after the gunship blew half his face apart, and my Shep would not have left him alone in the med-bay. (This is not the update I mentioned in the previous chapter, I'm still working on that one)._

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><p><em>Without a single thought, two hands collide and the world finally makes sense again.<em>

― Kayla Dawn

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><p>Fire and blood and the desperate scream of a human woman.<p>

_This dream again._

It is every nightmare Garrus has suffered since Shepard died, and the fading beat of his heart thundering in his ears doesn't do much to reassure him.

_We are dead, and this is the afterlife._

The pressure of her hand squeezing his shoulder, the scent of her, gunpowder and metallic human blood and antiseptic and machinery—her face has changed, scars shining through her skin and he has no doubt at all that he is dead and so is she and they'd reunited here to call down vengeance from beyond the grave. It was part of the human mythos regarding angels, after all, that they could resurrect the dead and cast miracles.

The lights are all too bright, the crack of gunfire rings too sharp and fades too slowly away. Garrus' mind is operating beyond overload, looking up at the breaking point without realizing he's already shattered. It isn't until he's truly dying that everything clicks into place and reality solidifies around him in blindingly painful truth.

Archangels aren't immortal after all.

Lying in a pool of his own blood and choking out his last breaths while her voice is screaming at him from a lifetime away. _Hold on, Garrus. Hold on! Don't you dare die on me now! _He can taste her panic but the world is fading away like a dream and the softness of the dark is calling him and—

_Shepard...?_

And everything is, once again, too late.

* * *

><p>He didn't even realize he was awake at first. The numbed weight of his body sunk into the bed, gravity tugging irresistibly at each bone. Machines beeped softly in the darkness.<p>

His mind climbed slowly out of the fog of drug-induced sleep and tried to make sense of his memories. It was like walking into an unfamiliar room in a stranger's house and realizing it was furnished with his own things. Each piece intimately vital and yet utterly unconnected.

And then he turned his head and she was there, beside him, slumped and asleep in a chair at his bedside. One small human hand curled tightly around his on top of the rumpled sheets, too-many fingers wrapped around his own. The talon of his thumb a stark black curve over the pulse in her wrist.

_Shepard_.

The whispered thought was a stone dropped into a deep well, stirring ripples of memories. Bright blood and the smell of human sweat and the sharp crack of gunfire.

_Shepard_.

Sitting at his bedside, wearing the wrong uniform and the wrong scars and she even _smelled_ wrong, somehow, the sharp scent of metal underlying the familiarity of human skin and sweat and whatever soap she used on her hair and the ever-present traces of gunpowder and the scorched smoky smell of the inferno ballistics she loved.

Bright blue eyes fluttered open under the scrutiny of his gaze, sleepy and unfocused, sharpening with the realization that he was awake. Her mouth stretched in a smile and her fingers squeezed his and his heart lurched sideways like he'd stepped off a cliff into freefall.

"Hey," she said, voice pitched low and still rough with sleep. "You're alive."

_You're alive_.

Words like stars spinning in the darkness.

Garrus pressed his thumb against the steady beat of her pulse. "So are you." It hurt to talk and it hurt to breathe and it even hurt to _blink_, raw skin tight over aching muscles.

Shepard snorted, a soft exhalation of sound. "Yeah," she said. "I guess that's what this is." He couldn't be sure if the wry edge to her voice was amusement or bitterness, and wondered if she even knew herself. She splayed her free hand, soft orange light shining in lines beneath her skin, and he finally realized what was off about her scent.

"Cybernetics."

Her expression was half-smile, half-grimace. Furrowed brows and full lips faintly illuminated by the glow beneath her flesh. "Shepard 2.0, back from the grave and better than ever."

"So...you really died." It slipped out before he had time to consider it.

Shepard's eyes met his unflinchingly in the dark. "I really did."

He moved his thumb over her wrist and held her hand. "But you came back."

Something happened with her face that he didn't quite understand. She swallowed then looked away and cleared her throat. "Yeah," she said, her voice soft and rough in the darkness. "I came back."

Somehow, it was all that mattered. Scars and blood and lost friends, all of it fresh and raw and at this moment all of it distant and fading into the soft sound of her breath and the way her hand curved in his.

"You saved me," he said. He didn't know how to tell her that he wasn't talking about the gunship.

Her fingers tightened around his and then there was a soft, hesitant weight settling onto the bed beside him. Her hip bumped against his and, startled, he looked up again and met her eyes in the dark. Shepard stared up at him, and then lifted one hand to trace careful fingers over his face.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, and he smiled and then winced and she laughed. "Sorry. Right. Stupid question." Her hand fell away.

Garrus lifted his own hand, clumsy and thick, and brushed the back of one finger over the orange glow beneath the high curve of her cheekbone. She drew in a breath.

"Do yours?" he asked, and dropped his hand when she shook her head.

"Not anymore," she said, her voice going over the words like water over rocks, the shapes and textures of hurts lurking beneath the surface. And she looked down at her upturned palms like they belonged to someone else, the lights tracing beneath her skin like veins of lava through rock.

The image bloomed in his mind before he could banish it: Shepard, alone in the dark of the void while their ship exploded all around her. The sound of her own breath must have been so loud, the fire so bright, and then—

His breath hissed out through his teeth. "I should have been there," he said, sharp and sudden and tense. His hands closed around hers, hiding the glow of the implants. "I should have been with you. I should never have let you send me away."

Her face shifted. Softened. "Garrus, your Spectre training—"

The harsh laugh barked out of him. "Was a joke. I washed out. I couldn't—" _You _died_ and everything fell apart_. He bit off the words. "Shepard—" _The greatest regret of my whole wasted life is letting you die. _He blew out his breath and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he breathed. "I should have been there."

She made some sound, some strangled little mammalian noise and when he opened his eyes and looked at her he couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. "Why?" she asked, her voice strained and tight. "So you could have died right alongside me—"

He pressed his fingers over her mouth and cut her off. "_Stop_. Shepard, just—stop. It doesn't matter. There's nothing you can say to—change it. I should have been there. And I wasn't. I don't care if you think it wouldn't have changed a damn thing. _I should have been there_."

Her eyes were bright in the darkness and her skin was very warm and in the cold, quiet med bay he could feel the warmth of her body and realized he was leaning over her and that his hands were trembling and the feelings he had buried with her memory were burning through his veins.

"And _damn you_ if you think you can drop me off on the Citadel just because of this stupid injury, or if you try to leave me behind on even a single _recon mission_ on whatever impossible, stupid quest we're on now—"

Her smile was a white flash of teeth in the darkness. "_We_, Garrus? You don't even know who I'm working for, or why."

"It doesn't matter. I don't care."

The machines beeped and hissed in the sudden silence and she stared at him with something impossibly human on her face.

Two years ago, naive and young and stupid, he never would have dared push her this way. But he wasn't young anymore. And he no longer believed in heroes. She wasn't a paragon of truth and justice, she was just _Shepard_, a human woman with scars and flaws and enough stubborn strength to defy even death. He didn't want to follow blindly in her footsteps. He wanted to walk at her side. A partner. An equal.

A friend.

He turned her hand over in his. Pale human skin almost white in the darkness, broken lines in her skin where the machinery glowed.

_Don't make me leave you again._ _I think I need this._

It was not a comfortable thought.

She smiled up at him, a slow twist of her mouth. "What happened to your unquestioning turian obedience?"

"It got shot off in the same war where I lost my sarcasm."

"And your sense of when to it really necessary to stop that rocket with your _face_?"

"Well, I didn't see _you_ volunteering."

"Because I have something called _common sense_."

Garrus blinked. "Remind me of that," he said, staring down at her, "the next time you decide to play _captain goes down with the ship._"

Her fingers were so small, curled around his, and there was something _odd_ about her smile, something soft and not at all familiar. "Well," she said, quietly, "that's why I have you. To follow me to hell and back."

"Is that where we're going this time? Do I get hazard pay?"

She arched her brows. "Dunno. I'll ask the boss."

"Aren't _you_ the boss?"

Shepard hesitated, biting her lip. "No. Well. Kind of, I guess. We're, ah, well." She met his eyes. "_Cerberus_ brought me back from the dead. Because there are whole colonies vanishing and the Illusive Man thinks it's connected to the Reapers."

Garrus blinked, then clicked his teeth together, considering her. "The same Cerberus that almost killed you on Akuze?"

"Yup."

"And experimented on rachni and husks?"

"Yup."

"And killed that admiral and his squad?"

"Yup."

A beat of silence, and then he smiled at her.

"Okay," he said.

She looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or punch him. "That's it? _Okay?_"

"Yup."

They met each other's eyes in the darkness, and he didn't care that the smile hurt his face or that they were working for terrorists because when she tilted her head back and let go with that full-throated laugh something clicked into place inside of him, some missing piece slid home and everything made sense again. The years and regrets and string of failures didn't exactly melt away but he knew, in his heart that somehow it would all be _okay_.

Because they were together again.

"Shepard and Vakarian versus the whole damned universe," she said, mirroring his thoughts.

Garrus asked, slowly, as if the thought were just occurring to him, "You think that krogan, old what's-his-name, wants in on this?"

She laughed, struggling to breathe. "God, Garrus. _Old what's-his-name_?" And there was that strange little smile again. Shepard shifted on the bed, her hip pressing against his thigh. "The Illusive Man doesn't seem to think so. He said Wrex hasn't left Tuchanka since—" She blinked, and cleared her throat.

"Since you died," he finished for her, watching her eyes darken.

She drew in a breath. Her shoulders hitched, then relaxed. Her eyes dropped to their hands, still gripped.

"It wasn't two years for me," she said, so soft he almost missed it. And then she looked up and met his eyes again and something burned in those blue depths, something unnamable to anyone who had never passed beyond the threshold of life.

And returned.

"No?" he asked, matching her soft tone.

"No. I—I _died_—" she spat the word "—and the next thing I can remember is that damn Cerberus surgical bed and the taste of my own blood and—and nothing in my body _worked_ and everything hurt and Miranda was yelling at me over the comm."

"They really did—bring you back from the dead," he murmured, and she shivered.

"Yeah. Can't say I recommend it, as an experience." Her eyes fell on the glowing lines tracing the delicate bones in the back of her hand. "I'm...afraid to ask them, how much of me is still, you know..."

_Me_.

His heart twisted sharply in his chest.

_I should have been there_.

"Hey," he drawled into the silence, and she looked up at him, the lines of her face soft in the darkness and the warm scent of her emanating across the distance between them and something _relaxed_ inside him and he lost the thread of what he'd been about to say.

"It's good to have you back."

She smiled, almost shyly. "Same to you," she said, and her smile slipped sideways. "You have no idea the crazies they've had me running around with. Not one damned decent shot."

"Oh, so now you only want me for my rifle, huh?" A warm memory spread through him. "Still complete shit with a _real_ gun, Shepard?"

Her eyes glittered in the dark. "Are you insinuating something about my shotgun, Vakarian?"

"The krogan battering ram, you mean?" he said lightly, and her laugh was low and dangerous.

"All right. You've stepped in it now, turian. We've got a date in the cargo bay with a row of targets as soon as the doc lets you out of here."

"I'll bring the beer."

His yawn stretched his injured plates and he winced, gingerly poking at the bandage on his face. She swatted his hand away.

"Don't pick at it. Let it heal."

He yawned again, and when he opened his eyes she was standing at his bedside, smiling down at him.

"And get some rest."

He gave her his best military salute. "Yes, ma'am, Commander Shepard, ma'am."

She gathered the blankets she's discarded when he'd woken her up and pushed the chair back to the wall.

"I meant what I said," he told her, and she stopped and met his eyes, arching one brow. "About the missions," he clarified. "About not getting left behind."

Something shifted across her face, too fast for him to identify.

"Garrus," she said softly. "There's no one I'd rather have at my side. Besides being one of the best goddamn soldiers I've ever served with, you are hands down the best sniper and one hell of a tactician. And I trust you. I trust your judgment and your morality." And she grinned. "Just maybe not your sense of when to duck."

Even with the joke to lighten it, the sincerity in her voice had him blinking hard, shifting his eyes away from her. He was more tired than he'd admitted to himself.

She squeezed his hand, smiling at him. "Get some sleep, Garrus."

In the open door she hesitated.

"You know," she said, her eyes flicking up to his, and then away again. "I really missed you."

The door clicked shut behind her.

"Yeah," he said, softly into the dark. "Me, too."

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><p>Note: Critique very welcome!<p> 


End file.
